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Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Reuben Chapple: All ideas have a pedigree

Dr
Elizabeth Rata’s recent article (“Democracy and Diversity”) makes some
excellent points about why equality in citizenship and one law for all must
always trump identity politics in the public square. However, she seems to have
skated somewhat lightly over how it is that “liberals of both the Left and
the Right embraced biculturalism with such religious-like commitment.” All
ideas have a pedigree.

The
ideological underpinnings of the Maori Sovereignty/bicultural movement trace
back to the early 20th Century writings of Communist revolutionaries Lenin and
Stalin on a topic they called “The National Question.”

Around
1905, Lenin and Stalin noted that Tsarist Russia consisted not just of ethnic
Russians, but upwards of 80 formerly tribal subject peoples, conquered by the
Tsars over the preceding 500 years and forcibly Russified. To expand the
Bolshevik support base, these peoples were promised “the right to manage their
own affairs,” “the right to self-determination,” “the right to speak, read,
write, use, and be taught in their own language” etc.

After
World War I, the multi-ethnic empires of Austro-Hungary and Czarist Russia to
which the National Question was first applied to stir up revolution were no
more. Lenin and Stalin then directed the National Question towards undermining
the hold of European nations over their colonial possessions, so as to deprive
them of sources of cheap labour, raw materials, and markets for finished goods.

Starting
in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Communists all over the world were
instructed to promote the independence aspirations of minority ethnic groups so
as to bring them into conflict with the status quo, undermining social
cohesion, breaking up nations and dependencies into warring factions, and
leading to eventual socialist control.

Locally,
the Communist Party of New Zealand (“CPNZ”) soon identified a minority strand
of Maori opinion centred on the Tainui, Tuwharetoa and Tuhoe tribes that had
always favoured reversion to tribalism, not engagement with the modern world.
The CPNZ ran in the 1935 General Election on a platform that included
“self-determination for the Maoris [sic] to the point of complete separation.”

You
heard it here first.

In
the 1930s, the CPNZ had little success with this line. Maori were a
predominately rural people and had little contact with Communists, who were
mostly found in urban areas with universities and a substantial manufacturing
base. This soon changed. Between 1945 – 1975, Maori underwent what University
of Waikato demographers Pool and Pole describe as “the most rapid urbanisation
of any group of people, anywhere.”

This
brought Maori flooding into the universities and trade unions, the CPNZ’s main
recruiting grounds. The Communists who’d begun colonising the our universities
to use them as factories of ideological reproduction had, by the mid-1960s,
achieved critical mass in many departments, especially those specialising in
the study of society. Their growing dominance on faculty hiring committees
allowed them to systematically exclude anyone holding alternative views.

Controlling
the universities is based on the writings of Antonio Gramsci, yet another
disreputable Communist held up as an intellectual icon by the academic Left. In
the 1920s, Gramsci reasoned that the capitalist ruling class controlled the
social discourse, meaning the "subordinate classes" [Gramsci widened
this from Marx's "the workers" to include women, ethnic minorities,
alternative sexualities] lacked all awareness of their own class oppressions.
Revolution must therefore first take place on the level of consciousness. This
would occur with the formation of a body of intellectuals who would take over
the Academy as a pulpit for mass-scale indoctrination. Ideally, these
intellectuals would come from the "subordinate classes,” but would also
include those from the "dominant classes" who could be induced to
switch sides.

Gramsci’s
adherents embedded themselves within our universities with the express agenda
of helping their students to understand that the major social sciences,
including geography, economics, sociology, history, political science,
anthropology, and psychology, were not neutral and impartial. They were instead
instruments of race, gender and class oppression. These views are now
considered "mainstream" in the Western Academy.

Liberal
arts students were told they were learning “progressive” new ideas about race,
gender and class, not Communism. They were programmed with all the principles
of Communism without the label then flattered for their cleverness in accepting
the programming. If you told them they were Marxists or Communists, they’d
respond with a pitying smile, roll their eyes, and accuse you of “seeing Reds
under the bed.”

Most
are not Communists. A small cadre of Communist converts derives a sense of
superiority from knowing they are manipulating the situation. The vast majority
are the fellow-travelling “Pinks” once referred to by Lenin as “useful idiots.”
Having internalised the system of values upon which their membership of “Club
Virtue” depends these people display a strong emotional resistance to having it
questioned. If you disagree with them you are racist, sexist, fascist,
misogynist, homophobic or just plain stupid. Rational discourse with such
people is impossible.

After graduating,
they have slithered forth from the academy into the media,
education system, trade unions, Labour Party, entertainment industry, churches
and other institutions that shape society’s governing ideas. Our universities
thus served as a transmission belt into wider society for a raft of Communist
narratives, including that of Maori as an “oppressed” people. As a result of
what Communists refer to as “pressure from below,” the political centre of
gravity has moved steadily leftward over several generations.

Then
there is what Communists call “pressure from above.” Following the creation of
the United Nations in 1945, Communists on its various committees and workgroups
began to drip-feed National Question ideology into the fabric of that
organisation. By 1960, the UN General Assembly had adopted the Declaration on
the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. This stated
that all peoples have a “right to self-determination” and proclaimed that
“colonialism should be brought to a speedy and unconditional end.”

Over
several decades, this position morphed into the UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples (“the UN Declaration”). New Zealand’s recent adoption of the
UN Declaration is not binding and lacks an enforcement mechanism. Nonetheless,
this document is far from harmless. The Declaration’s lofty phrases on the
rights of indigenous people to self-determination, to maintain their own
languages and cultures, to protect their natural and cultural heritage, and
manage their own affairs, have further emboldened the Maori Sovereignty
movement.

A
few decades ago, anyone peddling identity politics would have been regarded as
dangerously deluded. Now, through the Communist tactic of “pressure from above”
by the UN and “pressure from below” by ethnic nationalists and their moral
preening liberal enablers, the topic has been successfully mainstreamed.

The
presumptions of the Maori Sovereignty/bicultural movement - that some groups
are entitled on the basis of racial and/or cultural identity to separate,
different, or superior rights because some of their ancestors happened to be
somewhere first – now stand revealed for what they are: a long-running Communist
subversion strategy designed to substitute group rights for the individual
equality in citizenship that provides for a peaceful, free society in which
every citizen holds an equal share.

It is tempting, at first, to dismiss your argument as just that of another conspiracy theorist. But, if we examine the policies of the many prominent political intellectuals who have populated our Parliament over the years, the pattern you have described is very clear.

While the intent of the CPNZ conspiracy may have long ago lost traction, the seed that they planted has well and truly germinated and flourished in the garden managed by our cleverly indoctrinated "useful idiots".

Sadly, you are so right in opining that it is impossible to engage in a rational debate with them.

Is it too late to draw back from the brink of a social catastrophe here in 'God's own'?

Reuben, your research has just helped confirm to me to trust my instincts.

I have been looking at our race relation issues like this - some policies are SO wrong ; SO against the grain of our countries innate foundations that you have to sit back from it and question if it is deliberately 'planned' that way and then ask yourself 'why'.

You have put the case to perfection Reuben. The sad thing is that a large proportion of the generation who are now reaching their forties, still don't look like growing up. The ideals of communism as they are promoted in the universities, unions, UN etc are sticking with the 30 somethings still living in their mothers back bedroom or on the dole or the DPB. The entitlement generation I will call them. It is not until new generations achieve adulthood that they realise they have been duped by the peddlers of the philosophy you so beautifully outline. It is not until people cross that threshold from adolescence to adulthood that they realise the communist philosophy is unworkable. The threshold used to manifest around the age of 18 years, now the new generations are still playing Peter Pan and Wendy, way into their forties.The Indigenous Peoples route will be the death of New Zealand.

I am an immigrant from a country where Communist credentials were/are expounded as badges of honour (and honest criticism was/is cause for 'shock-horror' disbelief and ridicule of the type you describe). As a senior teacher I was eager to learn. I had questions but was dismayed by the same high-handed reaction and indignation by staff in schools and academic circles when I settled in New Zealand. Many graduates with, I found, a flimsy grasp of early settler and social history made no attempt to hide the residual sense of shame generated, they admitted, in lecture after lecture. Your synopsis is a valuable aid to understanding how this came about and why it continues.

Do you know how many Maori activists, including Princess Te Puea, Matiu Rata, Hone Tuwhare, Tom Poata, Tame Iti, Donna Awatere-Huata and many others began their political careers within the orbit of the CPNZ and its various splinter groups and offshoots (Socialist Unity Party, Socialists Workers Party, Workers Communist League)?

Probably not.

Or how many prominent white Treatyists of the last 40 years have the same political pedigree?

Probably not.

Have you read Stalin on the National Question?

Probably not.

Give it a go: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03.htm

Could there be any connection with the fact that the self-same cant is used today by indigenous activists all around the world? That these self-same words appear in the UN Declaration?

For the last two decades a direct connection with Marxist-Leninism is not needed to become a Treatyist. All you have to do is undertake tertiary studies with an approval-seeking mindset - and bingo - you become a "useful idiot."

Great summation of what is\has happened all over the globe. I have read many articles and books over the years and learned about the French Revolution, Marx, Lenin, the Bolsheviks, Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, Whitaker Chambers and so on. This article puts the entire movement into clear perspective showing what has happened in the US as well as NZ and other places.

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